Carpool ride matching systems have been used to automatically match carpool drivers and passengers based on various carpool criteria, such as departure time, arrival time, route, availability, and other factors. Once participants have been assigned to a carpool, the system may notify each of the participants of their assigned meeting location and time. Although the carpooling system may automatically assign these times based on the preferences specified by each participant and an estimated time required to reach each participant, there are nonetheless situations in which one or more participants are late due to traffic, work, or other reasons which may delay the entire carpool and result in poor customer satisfaction.
In the past, carpool participants have typically called or texted each other to either inform the other participants that they will be late or check on a status of the other participants. However, having to manually check on the status of other participants by calling or texting is inconvenient and time consuming. Not only that, but repeatedly calling or texting to send or receive status updates has been perceived as disruptive and annoying. Additionally, carpool drivers may be prohibited from texting while driving or talking on the phone without a hands-free communication device.
There is a need for automatically collecting and distributing status information about carpool participants, such as location, speed, and movement information of each carpool participant, to automatically update each carpool participant with the status of the other participants.